The bones confirmed yesterday as those of the Russian imperial family may not be all they seem, but are certain to revive a bitter controversy.
Significantly, the skeletons of two family members are missing. All experts agree that the remains of the Tsarevich Alexei have not been found. The bones of one of the tsar's daughters, either Grand Duchess Maria or, more probably, those of Anastasia, are also absent. There is also evidence that some of the "Yekaterinburg bones" belong neither to the imperial family nor to their servants who died with them 80 years ago.
That will not stop leading politicians and churchmen fighting for possession of the remains. President Yeltsin is likely to name St Petersburg, a city hated by Nicholas II, as the future place of burial but there are powerful forces who will fight this decision.
The main parties to the coming struggle will be: Mr Eduard Rossel, governor of the Sverdlovsk Region in which Yekaterinburg is situated; two branches of the Russian Orthodox Church; conflicting members of the Romanov family; and Mr Yuri Luzhkov, the powerful mayor of Moscow.
Mr Rossel, with an eye to his region's economy, wants the bones buried in Yekaterinburg; he has promised to build a cathedral to accommodate them. It was in this city, on the site of the Ipatiev House, that the tsar, his wife, his five children, the family doctor, and three servants were shot by the Bolsheviks. Ironically the Ipatiev House no longer exists; it was razed to the ground in the 1970s on the orders of the city's communist party boss, one Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.
The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Alexiy II, who is a close associate of Mr Yeltsin, heads the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate). His church is considering the canonisation of the Russian royal family but insists that the remains of each individual be buried separately.
DNA tests have not fully solved the problem. A sample from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, helped identify the bones of the Empress Alexandra, to whom he was related on the maternal side.
In the case of the tsar, a Romanov relative, Mr Tikhon Kulikovsky of Toronto, Canada, refused to give a DNA sample when he heard that tests were to be done in Britain. The British monarchy refused sanctuary to their Romanov cousins after the revolution and left them to the mercy of the Bolsheviks.
Mr Kulikovsky's widow, Olga Kulikovskaya, has kept a phial of her husband's blood but has refused to allow it to be tested by the Moscow-based commission charged with solving the mystery.
In the end a Romanov cousin was exhumed from his Russian tomb so that his DNA could be compared with the Yekaterinburg bones. But it has proved impossible to distinguish with absolute certainty between the bones of one Romanov daughter and another.
The Moscow Patriarchate, therefore, faces a dilemma. The "Russian Orthodox Church Abroad" has no problem in this regard. This church owes its origins to those "white" Russians, up to a million of whom fled Russia after their defeat by the Communists in the civil war. More importantly it does not recognised the "Yekaterinburg bones" and has its own relics of the imperial family in the form of the remains of a human finger, claimed to be that of the tsar, and two jars of human fat. It will not allow these to be tested scientifically.
The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad already regards the imperial family as "sainted martyrs" and abhors the idea of interference with what it regards as holy relics. Its claims concerning the relics are strongly believed among its own adherents and these beliefs may not be all that farfetched.
Shortly after the killing of the family, Yekaterinburg was captured by "white" armies under Admiral Kolchak. An investigator, a "white" officer called Sokolov, made a report at that time that the remains of the family were "negligible" due to the Bolsheviks' use of sulphuric acid on the corpses of the family. The "negligible" remains he found could well be those in now held by the Russian church abroad.
Just as they differed over the authenticity of the claims of Anna Andersen to be Anastasia, the disparate scions of the Romanov family squabble over the question of the validity of the remains and the proposed location of their burial.
Far more pragmatic than anyone else is the mayor of Moscow. Mr Luzhkov has even managed to have his city excluded from Russia's general economic reform programme and although some of his associates have been involved in extremely unsavoury activities, he has managed to keep his hands clean.
Mr Luzhkov, up to now, has always got his way. He has also recently constructed the immense Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Central Moscow. The burial of the royal remains there would enhance his chances of succeeding Mr Yeltsin as President in the year 2000. Nicholas's own preference for Moscow over Petersburg may help his claim.